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Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

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Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#261

Post by perching_aix »

Teever wrote: post #157
perching_aix wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation does participate in the culture of course, but I disagree that it would drive it necessarily. You can only do so much by reminding people to align with the posting guidelines and removing ill fitting posts and individuals.

This place would look like 4chan if it wasn't for the moderation. Moderation absolutely drives the culture, by setting a tone that drives away certain users while attracting others. In other words what ever issues a site has are inherently due to moderation whether it be a choice on the part the moderators or a lack of resources to moderate as they would like to.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing. Yes, moderation is key, but ultimately people post the content. As you say, it's a matter of attraction. But if the target group of attraction is empty, there's no amount of moderation that can help that.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#263

Post by tomhow »

cbeach wrote: post #28

Welcome Tom! One thing I'd really like to see is less tactical flagging of content. Hopefully with your additional help, people who suppress content they disagree with will be kept in check. Open discourse is something that used to be sacrasanct in scientific and engineering circles. Over the last decade or so, free speech has been on the decline, and discussion is now very polarised along political lines. For exampl…

I understand, and lament, that the world is so polarised these days. There's a limit to what we in this little corner of the web can do to correct such powerful global macro trends, but we'll continue to try our best.

If you see things that are unfairly flagged, you can email us and we'll look at them. As long as comments/submissions are within the guidelines, we'll restore them.

We want HN to be a place where people can discuss contentious topics. This is a major reason why I've moved into an expanded role here. I think HN has been, and can continue to be, one of the better places on the internet for discussing contentious topics.

The thing to remember is the guiding principle of HN is curiosity. This place is not meant to be for ideological battle, or for trying to win arguments. It's for conversations where we can learn from each other about things we're curious about.

I've always liked to learn about the opposing side of whatever position I hold. That's why I've found HN to be so valuable, and I want it to be a place people to come to for that reason for many years into the future.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#265

Post by roflyear »

yorwba wrote: post #245
dang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That site had 11 major frontpage threads in the last year, which is a lot. Every single one of them set off the flamewar detector. That's extremely unusual. If it were one or two I'd call it random, but 11 in a row, whatever the reason, is not random. We turned off that software penalty on about half of those threads.

In his article https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i... he mentions several times that he is aiming for "comment traction," treating articles with more comments than upvotes as successful while complaining that recently there haven't been as many comments. It does make sense that DaringFireball would consider starting a flamewar a job well done, but of course HN is optimizing for the opposite.

Or - he's critical of SV and large tech companies?

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#266

Post by otterley »

asveikau wrote: post #99
otterley wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted it because it bears little relation to this story, not because I disagreed with it. It's basically complaining that they're not getting enough love from other members. The mods don't quash comments merely because they convey dissenting opinions; they quash them when they become toxic to the community.

I guess you could say the comment is conflating the mod team and the community. I think the community can be pretty susceptible to groupthink and hyper-conformity, and there are tons of legitimate criticisms around that. But it's true that usually the mod team won't suffer directly from that, from what I've seen.

One person’s “groupthink and hyper-conformity” is a statistician’s normal distribution.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#267

Post by tptacek »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #101
kccqzy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN. Personally I hope Tom will bring new moderation policies that will truly let unpopular opinions thrive, but I don't have high hopes here since this is just an announcement of a new moderator, not an announcement of new moderation policies.

> For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN. That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion, and people will disagree with it, post responses to it, and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence, unless it's also violating site policy in other ways.

As someone who actively believes Manifest V3 is good for users, I second this: my opinion is not suppressed by this forum. It's simply unpopular among nerds, the population to whom this forum is aimed.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#270

Post by justsid »

DistractionRect wrote: post #219
codetrotter wrote: post #160

In the classic tradition of thinking that “dang” is pronounced “dang” and not “Dan G.” I propose that we read “tomhow” as “Tomh Ow”.

If you torture it a bit, you can make it "tomorrow" said with a weird accent. To mh ow

That is exactly what my brain auto completed it into when I read the headline
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